Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"Who," Penelope demanded, holding a jar of scented candle at arm's length like it had peed in her favorite shoe, "thought sandalwood and clove was an acceptable combination for a candle meant to be burned indoors, in an enclosed space, where people have to breathe?"

Colin looked up from his laptop, where he was supposed to be finishing a piece on the best hidden beaches of the Amalfi Coast and was instead watching his omega interrogate a candle like it owed her money.

"You bought that candle, love. With your own money."

"I know I bought the candle, Colin, that's not the point—" She set it down as if it might detonate. "The point is it smells so fucking wrong now. Like someone set a Christmas tree on fire and sprinkled the whole spice cabinet on it for fun."

"Maybe your nose is being a drama queen,” Colin said. Then muttered under his breath, “Like the rest of you frequently do, nowadays."

He got a well-earned smack on the back of his head.

"My nose does nothing that I don't approve of."

He grinned, biting back a comment about how that was exactly how he behaved, like a good, obedient Alpha. He'd learned, over the last few weeks, that certain observations were better left unsaid, and even a strong alpha had to learn to bend before his mate, once in a while. 

Penelope had been a live wire lately: snapping at innocuous things, dozing off mid-sentence, ravenous at ten in the morning and then repulsed by the very same meal an hour later. He'd chalked it up to her book deadline. She'd chalked it up to the same.

Neither of them had chalked it up to what it actually was.

It was three days later, on an unremarkable Tuesday, that Colin figured it out first, thanks to his impeccable Alpha olfactory senses.

He came home from the office irritated because of the industrial smell of the London tube, badly brewed coffee, and the strong smell of garlic prawns Mrs. Canterbury—their 87 year old neighbour was cooking that night, shrugging off his coat in the entryway, already calling out for Penelope the way he always did—the ridiculous, affectionate shout of "Baby, I'm home, please tell me you haven't set anything on fire today!"—when it hit him.

Her scent.

Not different, exactly. Just—more. Deeper. Sweeter. Stronger. Something warm and round and lemony underneath the usual cinnamon-and-syrup sweetness he'd associated and could detect even if he was rendered blind, deaf, and half-dead. Something musky and earthy like his own scent was intermingled with hers and was quietly getting stronger as he walked inside the house. It was her smell that night that made every instinct in his body go very, very still.

He stood in the hallway outside the kitchen for a solid ten seconds, his coat still half off one shoulder, sniffing the air like an absolute lunatic.

"Colin?" Penelope called out from the kitchen doorway. "Are you having a stroke out there?"

"No," he said faintly. "No, I'm just—give me a second." 

And then he took a deep breath in.

And there it was!

He was not a doctor. He was not a biologist. He'd spent exactly one mandatory semester on Alpha-Omega Reproductive Health in university and remembered approximately four facts from it, three of which were about heat cycles and one of which was a diagram he'd been too embarrassed to look directly at.

But he was an Alpha. And a good one, completely attuned to his omega. And some things, apparently, you simply knew when you loved your mate as much as Colin did.

He found her in the kitchen, hip cocked against the counter, absolutely destroying a jar of pickles like she'd never eaten food before in her life, and he just—looked at her. Really looked. The slight flush high on her cheeks. The way she kept pressing a hand to her stomach between bites, frowning like she couldn't figure out why.

"Pen."

"What." She didn't look up. "I'm hungry.” 

"I can see that." 

“I'm so sorry, I didn't wait for you.”

“No, it's fine. Ummm… Pen?” His voice came out strange, rough at the edges. "Baby, when was your last cycle?"

That got her attention. She went very still, pickle halfway to her mouth, and slowly lowered it back into the jar.

"...Why."

"Just answer the question."

She thought about it. He watched her think about it, watched the exact moment the math clicked into place behind her eyes, watched the color drain out of her face and then rush straight back in, twice as bright.

"Oh my God," she whispered.

"Yeah."

"Oh my God, Colin."

"Yeah," he said again, because apparently that was the only word he had left in his vocabulary.

She set the pickle jar down and looked at him with wide eyes. "I thought I was just stressed. I thought the book was making me insane. I thought—" She pressed both hands to her stomach now, staring down at herself like she could see straight through skin and muscle to whatever was happening underneath. "Colin."

"I know."

"Colin."

"I know, Pen." He crossed the kitchen in two strides to pull her into him, kissing the top of her head sweetly.

Neither of them moved for a long moment. Colin knew she was freaking out, probably thinking about Prudence and her litter of pups, and it made him resent that Harry bloke just a tiny bit because, this…them being pregnant was a good thing and he wanted her to be happy about it. And judging by her silence, he was anxiously thinking that maybe she wasn't and, well… how fucked up that was!

Penelope tightened her hold on his torso, making him jump out of his train of thought. She was still quiet, which made him quiet, and it felt, absurdly, like the whole world had gone quiet and loud at exactly the same time.

“Fuck! We are having a baby?”

“I…think so…?” Colin trailed off, unsure whether he was allowed to show his excitement yet.

“We are really going to have a baby, Colin!” Penelope said, laughing in disbelief, and Colin took a sigh of relief, she looked shocked, yeah, but not upset.

Then Penelope burst into tears, and with her, Colin laughed too—a wet, startled, helpless sound, before kissing her soundly.

"Why am I crying?" she gasped into his shirt. "I don't even know if it's true yet, I could just be stressed and hormonal and eating my body weight in pickles for absolutely no reason—"

"You're not." He pressed his lips into her hair, breathing her in, that new, lemony, impossibly sweet smell that had stopped him dead in the hallway. "Trust me. You're not."

"How do you know—"

"I don't know how I know. I just know. Alpha instincts!" He pulled back enough to look at her, thumbs brushing the tears off her cheeks. "Get a test. I'll go right now. I'll go to every pharmacy in Streatham if I have to."

She laughed, hiccuping through it. "It's ten p.m."

"Then I'll go to that one pharmacy in Streatham that's open."

He did. He came back eleven minutes later, soaked through from a rain he hadn't noticed had started, clutching a plastic bag with what turned out to be four different tests. 

"Just in case one's faulty," he explained when she gave him a look. Then handed her a family-sized bar of the chocolate she liked, because some instincts didn't need reproductive biology to explain them. He was a good boyfriend who just knew how to anticipate his woman’s needs.

She took the test in their tiny bathroom while he paced the hallway outside, muttering to himself, running both hands through his hair until it stood up in ten different directions.

"Colin."

"Yeah?" He was at the door, hair adorably mussed, making her want to do things to him, things that had landed them in this exact situation in the first place. 

"Come here." She beckoned him inside the bathroom.

He pushed the door open with more force than was necessary. Penelope was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at four little white sticks lined up on the counter like a firing squad, her whole body gone very still.

He didn't need to look at them to know.

He could smell it now—clearer, unmistakable, that same sweetness. A part of him had finally, quietly, taken root inside her and she had engulfed that part with herself, nurturing it with all her heart.

"Pen," he said, voice cracking clean in half.

She looked up at him, eyes wet and wide and terrified and glowingly happy, and nodded.

Colin sank to his knees in front of her—right there on the bathroom tile, absolutely ruining the knees of his trousers, and pressed his forehead to her stomach like he was praying to something.

"Hi," he whispered, to a collection of cells that didn't have ears yet, that wouldn't for weeks, that would never remember this moment as long as it lived. "Hi. It's your dad. I already love you an unreasonable amount, and I haven't even met you."

Penelope made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and buried both hands in his damp hair.

"You're ridiculous, love," she managed.

"This is nothing. I'm going to be much more ridiculous," he agreed, his voice muffled against her belly. "I hope you're ready for it."

It wasn't until later that night—after giving her three mind-blowing orgasms, after the chocolate had been thoroughly demolished, after downloading four different due date calculators on Colin's phone, after Penelope had made him promise, on pain of death, not to say anything to anyone (especially her mum) until they'd had at least one proper doctor's appointment—that the fear finally caught up with him.

She'd fallen asleep first, curled into the curve of his body, one hand still resting protectively over her stomach even in sleep. Colin stayed awake beside her, staring at the ceiling, listening to her breath even out, and felt something cold slide underneath all that soaring, stupid joy.

What if I'm not enough?

His own father had died when Colin was seven—too young to really remember him as anything but a warm, hazy shape at the edges of his memory, a voice he could no longer quite recall the sound of. He knew, intellectually, that Edmund Bridgerton had been a good father. Violet talked about him with a softness that never faded, and his siblings all carried some piece of him, some inherited feature or gesture or, in the case of Anthony and Ben—a habit or a turn of phrase. But Colin had grown up longing for the absence of him. Had grown up watching Anthony try to fill shoes three sizes too big for a boy of eighteen, watching his mother hold an entire household together through sheer force of will.

He didn't know how to be a father. He only knew what it felt like to grow up without one.

He must have made some sound, some small restless noise, or a sudden movement because Penelope stirred against him, blinking up through the dark.

"Baby, why are you thinking so loudly?" she mumbled.

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Tell me what's going on."

He hesitated. But this was Penelope—the one person on earth who'd never once let him hide behind charm when something actually mattered—so he told her. About his father. About Anthony's sudden journey towards pseudo-fatherhood, bowed too young under a weight he never should have had to carry. About the quiet terror that he'd fumble this the way he sometimes felt he fumbled everything that actually mattered.

Penelope was quiet for a long moment after he finished. Then she reached up, cupping his jaw in the dark.

"You already stopped me from being left alone in a blizzard," she said softly. "Redesigned an entire trip around my needs because you were scared of taking up too much space in my life. You made me realise how to be true to myself, Colin! You taught me that I could be a good omega and an independent woman and those two things weren't mutually exclusive. You cried into my stomach twenty minutes after finding out about the baby, darling. I think—" her thumb stroked along his cheekbone "—I think you're going to be embarrassingly good at this. In a way that would make me extremely jealous. In a way that would make our kid roll their eyes at school pickup because their dad is that dad."

"Which dad?"

"The one who cries at every single milestone. The one who takes four thousand photos of the same thing from four thousand angles. The one every other kid is a little jealous of, the one our kids will idolize even if they'd never admit it."

Colin smiled sweetly.

"You really think so?"

"I know so." She kissed him, slow and sure, then smiled against his lips. "Besides, you are a Bridgerton. You didn't inherit fear of family, Colin. You inherited love. And you have plenty of that to give."

He pulled her closer, burying his face in her neck, breathing in that new, rich pregnant sweetness of hers that he already couldn't imagine living without.

"I love you," he murmured against her skin. "Both of you."

"We know," she whispered back, and he could feel her smile against his jaw. "Both of us. You've been informing us very thoroughly for the last three hours."

“Pen…”

“Hmmm?”

“I want you.”

Penelope smiled into his chest. “Then take me.”

And take he did, pulling off her soft cotton night dress from her body, propping her against the cushions he arranged so lovingly, and sliding into her rapidly slickening cunt. He went slower than usual—agonizingly slower, unhurried in a way their instincts rarely allowed for, all soft hands and softer words, the kind of intimacy that had nothing to do with the primal howl of their biology and everything to do with two people trying to comfort each other and promise their unwavering devotion for a lifetime. Colin worshipped her tits with a devotion that made her breath catch, and her eyes sting, murmuring endearments against every inch of her skin like he was cataloguing something sacred. 

He cupped her breasts with both of his hands, sliding his tongue over and over on her pebbled nipples as he alternated between her tits. All the while keeping himself buried deep inside her, stretching her full. But not making any movement. Just pinning her down to the bed with his cock, and then savouring her breasts like it was his favorite snack. 

He felt her grow restless underneath him, then desperate, then impatient as she began rutting against his cock. He chuckled. 

“Stay still,” he growled in his alpha voice.

“Can't. Need you—” she whimpered from underneath him.

“Can, too.” Colin chuckled as she let out a frustrated sigh. He kissed her soundly, and then whispered in her ear, “Stay still for a little while, and I promise I’ll fuck this impatience out of you.”

Penelope made a small sound of protest, but he immediately swallowed it with another heated kiss. His lips returned to her breasts once again, tongue encircling her tight nipples in languid strokes. Several minutes of this torture later, her orgasm began building up in her core. 

“Fuck me. Please, alpha!”

Colin started rutting into her then, and that was when she felt how impossibly large and hard he had grown even as he was just impaled into her cunt, not even moving. The friction his thrusts created felt absolutely divine though, and Penelope felt herself shattering around him within minutes, closely followed by him.

And when they finally rode out their orgasms, all she felt was gratitude, surrounding the entire space around them and settling over them like a warm blanket.

"So," Penelope said into the quiet of the night, "we're doing this, then."

"We're doing this," Colin agreed, and kissed the top of her head like a vow. “And we are going to ace it.”

Colin's editor, Mr. Fitzwilliam, had, by all accounts, seen everything.

He had spent twelve years of his life at the magazine. Prior to that, he was a features writer who once tried to expense an entire donkey in Marrakech ("for research," he'd insisted).  He had a brief stint as a photographer who'd gone missing for six days in the Faroe Islands and returned with nothing but incredible content and a mild concussion. He started out his career as an intern who'd cried during a pitch meeting because the office biscuits ran out.

So there was nothing and possibly no one who could shake him out of his steady calmness that he had acquired through years of meditation.

He had not, however, anticipated that Colin Bridgerton would be the one to shake it.

"Sit down," Colin said as he entered Mr. Fitzwilliam’s office, gesturing at the chair across from his own editor's desk like he owned the building.

"...This is my office, Bridgerton."

"Right. Yes. Sorry." Colin sat instead, spreading his papers across the desk with the brisk efficiency of a general briefing his war cabinet. "Sit down anyway. I need to talk to you about my paternity leave."

Mr. Fitzwilliam, a beta who had covered wars, famines, and one extremely ill-advised royal wedding, blinked at him.

"...Congratulations?"

"Thank you. Now. According to the current company policy—" Colin flipped to a highlighted page "—paternity leave is offered at six months, statutory pay, to be taken immediately after the child's birth."

“I didn’t know you were an omega.” Mr. Fitzwilliam said while staring at Colin’s abdomen.

“I’m not.” Colin said, flustered and a bit irritated at the obvious presumption, “I am going to be a father, yes. My—my girlfriend is pregnant.”

“Ooooh, okay. I think there’s some confusion,” Fitzwilliam said, an amused smile spread across his features, “This stipulation is for omega fathers who are actually, physically pregnant and carrying their pups inside their bellies.”

“What? Really?”

“In your case, you get two weeks of Paternity Leave, statutory pay, to be taken within two weeks of the child’s birth.”

“That’s—that’s—”

"That's... standard, yes."

"It's criminally insufficient."

Fitzwilliam rubbed his temples. "Colin."

"This is gender discrimination! Penelope, my omega, she’s pregnant. It is new for us. Both of us. There's very little precedent for what her postpartum needs will actually look like, medically speaking, but everything I've read suggests the first several weeks are critical for pair-bonding, scent-imprinting, and general nest stability—"

"Nest stability—"

"—and frankly, two weeks is an insult to every biological instinct my body currently possesses. I would like to propose an alternative arrangement." Colin slid a second document across the desk. "Eight weeks, full pay, remote flexibility for the following four months, and an emergency scent-related travel clearance in case Penelope's condition requires me to leave the assignment at short notice."

There was a long, ringing silence.

"Scent-related travel clearance," Fitzwilliam repeated slowly, "is not a real thing that exists in any employment law I am aware of."

"It should be."

"Bridgerton, I run a travel magazine. I cannot promise you eight weeks of full pay because your instincts demand it. I have a budget. I have a masthead. I have Deborah in accounts who will physically assault me if I approve this."

Colin leaned forward, with the immovable, quietly terrifying certainty of a man who had once driven through a blizzard to get to his mate, and would, without hesitation, do considerably more insane things for the pup currently the size of a grape. 

"Fitz," he said, low and even. "If you’re worried about Deborah, I’d like to tell you some things about me. I drove through a Category Four blizzard with three separate advisories against it because my mate needed me. I once caused what several campus security officers described as 'a genuine security incident' involving my bare arse to a professor because my rut kicked in at an inconvenient moment and I was not, structurally speaking, capable of being reasoned with. I can’t hold back when it comes to my mate." He paused. "I am telling you this not to alarm you, but so that you understand—when I say I need this leave, I am not negotiating. I am informing you, out of professional courtesy, of what is about to happen regardless."

Fitzwilliam stared at him for a long moment.

Then he sighed, deep and put-upon, and reached for the document.

“Damn you, Bridgerton,” he said, extremely displeased but afraid of going toe to toe with the alpha in front of him.

"Six weeks," Fitzwilliam reluctantly revised the terms, "Full pay. Remote flexibility for two months after that. And I am not putting 'scent-related travel clearance' in writing anywhere, because HR will actually have me committed."

"Six weeks and remote flexibility for three months."

"Six and two and a half."

"Deal." Colin stood, extending a hand, entirely too pleased with himself. "Pleasure doing business."

"Get out of my office."

"On my way." He paused at the door, turning back with the kind of insufferable grin his editor had learned, over the years, to dread. "Oh, and Fitz—if the baby comes early, I'm invoking the emergency clearance regardless of whether it's in writing."

"Out."

Telling the Featheringtons happened over Sunday lunch, which in retrospect was a mistake, because Portia Featherington did not process news gently under the best of circumstances, and roast chicken was apparently not the best of circumstances.

"I'm sorry," Portia said, setting down her fork with the exaggerated care of a woman trying very hard not to shriek. "Say that again."

"I'm pregnant, Mum."

Portia's hands flew to her chest. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. And then, without warning, she burst into tears so violently that Colin actually half-rose from his chair, alarmed, before Penelope waved him back down with a look that said this is normal, please sit.

"My baby," Portia wailed, "is having a baby."

"Yes, Mum, that is generally how it works—"

"Oh, I knew it, I knew the moment I saw your skin at Christmas, you had that glow, I said to your father—God rest him—I said, Featherington women always glow early, we're very fertile stock, it's genetic—"

"Mum, I wasn’t even pregnant then."

"I know!! That is the definition of early glow," Portia sniffed, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin. "Oh, Penelope. Oh, this is—this is everything. Grandchild number eight, can you believe it? I shall have to update the family portrait, we'll need a bigger frame—"

"Mum."

"—and a nursery, obviously. Do you have a nursery? You'll need a proper nursery, none of that minimalist nonsense, babies need clutter, they need stimulation—"

"Mum, we found out four days ago, we don't even have a due date yet—"

"There's no time to waste!" Portia was already up from the table, phone in hand, scrolling through what appeared to be a decade-old contacts list. "I know a wonderful woman who does nursery murals, she did Prudence's fourth room- absolutely gorgeous, a whole woodland scene, very calming for the nervous system—"

Colin, watching this unfold with the particular fascinated horror of a man realizing precisely where his mate had learned to spiral, leaned over and murmured, "Should I be taking notes?"

"Absolutely not," Penelope muttered back. "Do not encourage her."

It was only later, once the roast had gone cold, and Portia had cycled through three separate rounds of tears, two separate calls to relatives Penelope hadn't spoken to in years, and one lengthy tangent about the correct traditional gift for a first grandchild, that Prudence found her way to the kitchen, where Penelope had escaped under the pretense of making tea.

Prudence looked different than she had years ago—tired in the particular, permanent way of a woman who'd spent a decade running on fumes, but softer around the eyes than Penelope remembered. Motherly, affectionate. Seven children did that, apparently. Wore you down to something more honest.

"So," Prudence said, leaning against the counter. "You're really doing it."

"Doing what?"

"The whole thing. Fuck Alpha, bond with him, make a baby." Prudence's mouth twisted, not quite a smile. "The thing you spent half your life swearing you'd never do."

Penelope's hands stilled on the kettle. "Prue—"

"No, it's—" Prudence shook her head, cutting her off gently. "I'm not trying to start something. I just—" She exhaled, long and slow. "I used to hate you for it, you know. Not the pregnancy. Before. The suppressants, the lying, the beta box you ticked like lying about such a huge thing was nothing. I used to think—there she goes, judging me from her ivory tower, thinking she's better than the rest of us because she's not ruled by her biology."

"Prue, I never thought that—"

"I know that now." Prudence held up a hand. "Took me a while, but I know it now. You weren't judging me. You were terrified of becoming me." A pause. "And honestly? I don't blame you. I watched myself become exactly what I swore I'd never become, too. Just a different version of it."

Penelope set the kettle down, throat tight. "Prue, I never wanted—"

"Let me finish, Penny, I don't do this often." Prudence pushed off the counter, crossing the small kitchen to stand beside her. "What I'm trying to say, badly, is—watching you and Colin isn't like watching Harry and me. It never was. You didn't get trapped into this. You chose it. Every part of it, over and over, and he chose you right back, and that's—" her voice cracked, just slightly "—that's not nothing. That's not the same story at all."

Penelope reached out, without quite deciding to, and took her sister's hand.

“Pru, you and Harry—are you—you’re not happy?”

“I am. The most ridiculous thing about all this is, however tired I am all the time, I’m happy I have all my seven pups and Harry with me. We might not have everything at our disposal, but I love them anyway, and Harry loves me too. Still! After so many years. It's just—It's just that I’ve become quite a cautionary tale for young girls—”

"You're not a cautionary tale, Pru," she said quietly. "I'm sorry I ever let myself think of you that way. You're just—you got a hard hand. That's not the same as making a mistake."

Prudence laughed, wet and unsteady. "God, don't make me cry in the kitchen, Mum's already doing enough of that for the both of us."

"Too late," Penelope said, and pulled her sister into a hug, both of them laughing through it, ugly and real.

"For what it's worth," Prudence murmured into her shoulder, "you're going to be a good mum. You worry too much to be a bad one."

"That's terrifying advice."

"Hey, I raised your nieces and nephews just on vibes. It's the only kind of advice I've got." Prudence pulled back, wiping her eyes, and something like her old wicked humor flickered back into her face. "Also—invest in earplugs. And don't let anyone tell you the 'four-month sleep regression' isn't real. It is. Godspeed."

The Bridgerton household, by contrast, received the news with all the volume and chaos of a controlled explosion.

Colin had insisted on telling them in person, at the monthly brunch, which meant the entire clan (sans a very pregnant Daphne) was assembled: Anthony at the head of the table like a general holding court, Kate fussing over Edmund who kept blabbering around mouthful of food, Benedict sprawled sideways in his chair in a manner their mother had been correcting since he was six, Eloise interrogating everyone within a three-seat radius about something entirely unrelated, Francesca quietly picking at her food, Greg and Hy teasing each other about some mundane things, and Violet presiding over the whole affair with the serene, unbothered patience of a woman who had raised eight children and therefore feared absolutely nothing on earth.

Colin waited until dessert—a strategic decision, he'd explained to Penelope beforehand, on the theory that a family this large was significantly easier to manage when sedated with pudding—before clinking his glass.

"We have an announcement."

"Oh God," Eloise said immediately. "You're eloping. Please don't elope, Mum would actually like to plan a wedding."

Colin flinched and looked at Anthony. 

Anthony had been courting an omega named Edwina—steady, sweet, entirely sensible on paper—right up until the day he'd caught one whiff of her elder sister and promptly lost every shred of sense he'd ever possessed. He'd eloped with Kate the very next day, vanishing for two weeks straight, and returned only to announce, with the breezy confidence of a man who had clearly not thought through the logistics of telling anyone beforehand, that he was mated and had gotten married.

It had, to put it mildly, caused an upheaval. Two households' worth of it. Violet hadn't spoken to him for four days. The Sharmas had very nearly called the police. Edwina—humiliated, blindsided, and, by all accounts, entitled to never speak to a Bridgerton again as long as she lived—had needed months before she could be in the same room as either of them without her jaw setting like stone.

She'd come around eventually. Mostly. It had taken a great deal of groveling, a genuinely staggering number of apology flowers, and Kate personally sitting her down for an hour-long conversation no one else was ever allowed details of. But it had left a mark on the family—the specific, particular kind of mark that meant elopement was no longer a word anyone said lightly at the dinner table.

"We're not eloping."

"You're already eloping, and this is the cover story—"

"Eloise, for the love of—" Colin took a breath. Beside him, Penelope's hand found his under the table, squeezing once. "Penelope's pregnant."

The table went completely silent for exactly one and a half seconds.

Then it detonated.

Violet was up out of her chair before Colin had finished the sentence, hands pressed to her mouth, eyes already bright. Eloise let out a shriek that could have shattered glass. Benedict actually knocked his chair over, standing up so fast. Francesca started crying, quietly and with great dignity, which somehow made everyone else cry harder. Anthony, characteristically, simply went very still, staring at Colin with an expression that was equal parts pride and something older, heavier, unspoken.

"My baby," Violet said, cupping Colin's face in both hands, "is having a baby."

"That's what her mum said," Colin managed, muffled against her palms.

"Well, her mother is right," Violet said fiercely, releasing him only to immediately turn and pull Penelope into an embrace so warm and unguarded that Penelope felt herself tear up. "Oh, my darling girl. Welcome to the absolute chaos of it. I couldn't be happier."

"Told you she'd be like that," Colin murmured to Penelope over his mother's shoulder, and she had to blink hard against the sudden sting in her eyes.

Eloise, meanwhile, had already progressed to interrogation mode, hands braced on her hips. "So it was Boxing Day. I knew it was Boxing Day. Everyone in this family owes me twenty quid, I had money on the Boxing Day—"

"You bet on which day I'd get my girlfriend pregnant—"

"Colin, you gave her three glasses of eggnog so close to her approaching heat, and then you two were moaning and thumping wildly all night long. What did you think was going to happen, immaculate conception?"

"Eloise!"

"I'm just saying, all the residents of Aubrey Hall wished for what Mum got as a Christmas present from me. Earplugs—"

"There are children at this table—"

"There's about to be one more," Eloise shot back, entirely unrepentant, and even Anthony had to hide a laugh behind his napkin.

It was only once the initial pandemonium had settled—once Violet had extracted a promise for weekly updates and at least one ultrasound photo the moment they had one, once Francesca had composed herself enough to ask actual coherent questions about due dates, once Eloise had been successfully bribed into silence with the last slice of trifle—that Anthony and Benedict cornered Colin by the drinks cabinet, twin expressions of grave, entirely unnecessary seriousness on their faces.

"Right," Anthony said, pouring three glasses of something golden and expensive without asking his younger brothers if they wanted one. "Sit down. We need to talk."

"I am sitting."

"Sit down more."

Colin sat down more.

"First," Anthony said, handing him a glass, "sleep now. While you still can. I mean that. Sleep like it's a competitive sport. Sleep as if your life depends on it, because it will very shortly stop being an option."

"That tracks," Colin muttered.

"Second," Anthony continued, undeterred, "your entire identity is about to be hijacked by a creature that cannot hold up its own head for a good few months. You will find yourself, at three in the morning, singing an entire song about a tiny hedgehog that you invented on the spot and have no memory of composing. This is normal. Do not fight it."

"I still remember every word to 'The Sausage Song,'" Benedict said, with the misty, faraway look of a man recalling a great battle. "Made it up for Hyacinth when she wouldn't stop crying. Four verses. Full chorus. I have considered publishing it."

"Nobody wants your sausage song, Benedict."

"She wanted it. That's the only critic that mattered."

"Third," Anthony said, talking over both of them, "and this is the important one, Colin—" his tone shifted, something quieter and more genuine slipping underneath the older-brother bravado "—you're going to feel, at some point, like you have no idea what you're doing. Like you're one bad decision away from ruining everything. Every parent feels that. Every pseudo-parent feels that. I felt that. Father would have felt that, if he'd—" he paused, just slightly, and Colin's chest tightened "—if he'd had the time to feel much of anything, honestly. It doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're paying attention."

Colin looked down at his glass, throat suddenly tight. "How did you know? When we were younger. Or— or—when Kate was pregnant. How did you know you weren't going to just—mess up everything?"

Anthony was quiet for a moment, his eyes darting out to watch the leaves of the trees outside, rustling. 

"I didn't know," he said finally. "I still don't, some days. But I figured out pretty fast that the things I was most afraid of happening—those weren't things that happened to me. They were things that happened around me, because everyone was drowning and no one talked about it." He met Colin's eyes. "So talk about it. That's the whole trick, if there is one. Don't do the silence. Don't let her do it either. Whatever you feel, however stupid, talk."

Benedict, uncharacteristically solemn for exactly four seconds, nodded. "He's right. It's mostly just—being there. For your family." 

Colin dragged a hand down his face, genuinely rattled. "You two are terrifying. I am a bit scared now. Is it going to be hard?"

"Not hard, but definitely difficult," Anthony corrected. "There's a difference." He clapped a hand on Colin's shoulder, and something in the gesture carried more weight than the words around it ever could. "You'll be good at this. Better than you think. You've always led with your heart before your head, and for once in your life, that's exactly the right order to do it in."

Across the room, Penelope caught Colin's eye and smiled. Oddly, that settled Colin's fraying nerves.

He was going to be terrified, probably, for the better part of the next nine months and several decades after that.

But he wasn't going to be doing it alone.

Nesting hit Colin roughly a month before it hit Penelope, which nobody had warned either of them was possible.

It started when he couldn't resist rearranging the nursery furniture for the third time in a single afternoon, convinced the crib was catching a draft from a window that, upon inspection, was not only closed but double-glazed. It escalated to color-coded folders of pediatrician recommendations, a spreadsheet (another one) comparing prams by suspension quality, and one memorable Tuesday where Penelope came home to find him building a bookshelf—unprompted, unrequested, at eleven at night—because he'd read that early exposure to books improved cognitive development and apparently could not wait until morning to address it.

"Colin," she said, standing in the nursery doorway in one of his old jumpers, watching him wrestle a shelf bracket into submission. "It's not due for four more months."

"I know that."

"The baby cannot read."

"Yet," he said darkly, like this was a temporary and correctable oversight.

She crossed the room, gently prying the drill from his hands before he could attach a fourth shelf to a wall that already held three, and set it aside. "Come here."

He did, a little sheepish, letting her guide him down onto the half-assembled rug in the middle of the nursery floor, surrounded by baby clothes still in their packaging and a small mountain of stuffed animals that had somehow multiplied without either of them technically buying most of them.

"You know," Penelope said, settling against his chest, "you don't have to build the entire nursery in one night to prove you're going to be a good father."

"I know that too." He pressed his lips to the top of her head, one hand finding its familiar place over the curve of her stomach, now unmistakable, firm and warm beneath his palm. "I think I just—I don't know how to sit still with it. The wanting. It's too big to just feel. I have to do something with it, or it'll—"

"Overflow?"

"Something like that."

She laced her fingers through his over her stomach, feeling the answering flutter of movement beneath both their hands—faint, but unmistakable now, a small insistent presence that had started making itself known these past few weeks.

"There," she murmured. "They agree with me. No more bookshelves tonight."

Colin huffed a laugh against her hair, but thankfully he didn't move, didn't reach for another shelf bracket or another spreadsheet. Just sat there, wrapped around her in the soft lamplight of the half-finished nursery, feeling every small movement of the baby beneath his palm.

"When you fell asleep last night, I talked to her," he admitted quietly. "Or him. Whoever they turn out to be. Told them about Ben’s terrible sausage song story."

"You did not."

"I absolutely did. Figured they should be warned early."

Penelope laughed, tipping her head back to look at him, and the love on his face when he looked back at her—unguarded, a little wrecked, entirely, hopelessly gone for both of them—undid her completely, every single time.

"I love you," she said. "Even when you're building a bookshelf at eleven p.m. for our baby that hasn't been born yet. You’re crazy, by the way."

"But I’m your crazy," Colin said, and kissed her.

The last weeks of the pregnancy passed in a strange, syrupy blur. Penelope, enormous and exhausted and radiant all at once, was getting tired of Colin hovering around her with the vigilance of a man guarding state secrets. But she knew, just like her, he was caught somewhere between bone-deep terror and a kind of quiet, content joy. So she tolerated him

Pregnancy hormones tended to suppress an omega’s heat cycle entirely, and with the absence of Penelope’s heat, Colin's rut had gone quiet too, both their instincts folding inward instead, toward nesting and protecting rather than claiming and mating. But that didn't mean the pull between them had faded. If anything, it had deepened into something slower, steadier. Less wildfire, more banked coal, glowing low and constant beneath everything else.

It was two nights before her due date, in the small hours when the flat was dark and quiet, that Colin found her awake, restless, unable to settle despite the exhaustion dragging at every line of her body.

"Can't sleep?" he murmured, propping himself up beside her.

"Too big to be comfortable in any position known to man," she admitted, shifting for the hundredth time. "I think I've tried every configuration the human body allows."

He reached out, thumb tracing slow, soothing circles against the small of her back, right where the ache always settled worst these days. "Anything I can do?"

She was quiet for a moment, considering. Then, with a small, shy smile that still managed to undo him after two years of friendship, after mating and dating her for three years, after a baby on the way—she reached for his hand.

"Come here," she said softly. "Just—make me feel good, baby."

He understood immediately. Every protective instinct he had possessed for the last nine months shifted seamlessly, channeling into an absolute, single-minded devotion to her comfort. 

He moved with deliberate slowness, mindful of her size. Slipping beneath the heavy duvet, he settled himself close behind her, molding his front to her back like a protective bracket. He let his scent bloom safely—rich, warm, and grounding—wrapping around her like a familiar weighted blanket. One large, warm hand slid over the slope of her hip, resting gently atop the taut, high curve of her belly. He pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the bare skin of her shoulder, letting his breath fan warm against her neck. 

"Like this?" he whispered, his voice a low, gravelly vibration against her spine.

“Yes, fuck… but I need more of you.”

His thumb began to work, applying just the right amount of steady, rhythmic strokes over her mound. He knew her sensitive spots by heart now. With his other hand, he began a slow, soothing stroke across the tight skin of her bump, just around her navel, his palm memorizing the incredible weight of their shared future.

Penelope let out a long, ragged breath she felt like she’d been holding for weeks. The tension in her shoulders finally fractured, melted by his heat. Under his palm, the baby gave a soft, lazy roll, settling down in response to Colin's familiar touch and calming alpha cadence. 

Penelope let out a soft sigh, turning her head slightly to meet him as his lips traced a path up the sensitive column of her neck. When his mouth finally found hers, the kiss was devoid of the frantic hunger of their usual ruts. It was slow, deep, and incredibly sweet. 

He parted her lips with a gentle, rolling pressure, drinking her in like a man who had all the time in the world. Every stroke of his tongue was unhurried, matching the steady, heavy thrum of his heartbeat against her back. Penelope tangled her fingers in his thick hair, pulling him closer, anchoring herself to his solid warmth. 

His palm dragged down her spine, his thumb kneading the tight muscles of her lower back until she melted completely against him. He swept his hand upward, mapping the soft, swollen curve of her breast, his touch sending a fierce, sweet ache straight to her core. He hooked her thigh gently over his, supporting her weight and keeping all pressure off her belly. 

"You are so beautiful, Pen," he murmured, his voice rough and low, barely louder than a heartbeat as he slid his hand into her panties, stroking her slit slowly and sensually. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then the soft skin just beneath her jaw. "You take my breath away. Every single day, but especially now, with our pup inside you. Fuck, you look incredible."

Penelope let out a small, breathless laugh, her fingers tracing the sharp line of his collarbone. "I feel like a house, Colin. A very tired, very achy house."

"The most beautiful house I've ever seen," he corrected instantly, his tone fiercely sincere. He pressed a warm, lingering kiss to the high curve of her cheekbone. "I mean it. I look at you, and I just... I can't believe you're mine. That we made this."

Colin began stroking her clit, and Penelope immediately lost her words. His other hand had already slipped into her sleep shirt and was stroking her tit, rolling her sensitive nipple between his thumb and his forefinger gently.

Penelope began moaning and whimpering as he continued petting her, kissing her neck and inhaling her divine smell like his life depended on it. His cock rested against her arse, hot and hard, weeping at the tip. And Penelope wiggled against it until it was settled between her arsecheeks.

“Fuck, I wish I could be inside you.”

“You can—”

“No!” Colin said immediately. He was too afraid of hurting the baby at this point. Penelope chuckled, but was partly glad that he had taken this decision away from her. She missed it, housing his cock inside her velvety folds. But Colin was so big, and nowadays he felt even bigger, and she wondered whether it was just her skewed perception or he was getting extra hard and extra turned on by her pregnant body. Anyway, she was so close to her due date, and on Colin’s insistence, they had decided not to have penetrative sex.

Which is why, a few minutes later, Penelope found herself propped against the fluffiest of the pillows, and her mate’s head between her legs as he feasted on her cunt like it was his favorite meal. 

Goodness…He was driving her crazy!

Penelope screamed in ecstasy several minutes later, as the pleasure culminated into a mind-blowing release. She squirted all over his mouth and Colin, the smug alpha that he was, didn’t waste anything and drank her slick to his heart’s content.

When she came to her senses, Colin was already hovering above her. She reached up, cupped his face, and brought his lips to hers, tasting her arousal on his lips. 

“I love you,” she whispered softly.

“I love you more.” He replied, and she didn't doubt his words even for a second.

Colin threaded his fingers with hers and rested their hands on her belly. The baby gave a tiny, muffled kick against their palms, making them both smile against each other's skin. 

"I'm terrified," Colin whispered into the crook of her neck, the honesty stripping away any remaining alpha pride. "What if I don't know how to do this? What if I can't keep you both safe enough?" 

Penelope shifted slightly, pressing her lips to his forehead. "You're already doing it. You've been keeping me safe since the day we met, Colin. You were made for this." 

She pulled him down for another kiss. "Don’t worry, love. We're going to be okay. The three of us." 

He kissed her again—soft, repetitive presses against her lips, her nose, her eyelids—each one a silent vow of devotion, and gathered her close, thanking her for the impossible, exhausting, beautiful work her body had spent nine months doing. 

"Two more days," she whispered.

"Two more days," he agreed, and felt a small, insistent kick against his palm, as if in answer.

Neither of them slept much that night. But for once, neither of them minded.

She went into labour the following evening—eighteen hours early, in true Bridgerton fashion, as Eloise would later point out with insufferable satisfaction, because apparently even unborn, this particular pup had already inherited its father's disregard for schedules.

Colin, to his eternal credit, did not panic.

He panicked considerably after, once the initial adrenaline wore off and he found himself pacing a hospital corridor at four in the morning while his entire extended family descended on the waiting room in various states of dishevelment—Portia already sobbing, Violet serene and steady in the eye of the storm, Anthony gripping Colin's shoulder with the particular, wordless solidarity of a man who'd stood in this exact corridor himself, more than once, for his wife, yes… but also for his mother—when Hyacinth was born.

But in that extraordinary moment—in the labour room, holding Penelope's hand through every contraction, murmuring low and steady against her temple, reminding her over and over that she was the strongest person he'd ever known, that their pup was so lucky, so unbelievably lucky, to have her as a mum—Colin was nothing but calm. Nothing but present.

Nothing but hers.

And when, hours later, the sharp cry of a newborn finally cut through the room—small and furious and unmistakably, gloriously alive—Colin looked down at Penelope, exhausted and radiant and crying and laughing all at once, and felt every fear he'd carried through the last nine months dissolve into something so much larger than terror.

"Look what we made, love," Penelope whispered.

Colin, holding his daughter Agatha for the first time, could not, for once in his life, find a single word to say.

He didn't need one.

Paternity leave, as it turned out, started that very hour—six weeks, full pay, one deeply confused HR department, and an entire family of Bridgertons and Featheringtons crowded into a hospital corridor, waiting to meet the newest, smallest, most fiercely loved addition to both their chaotic, complicated, overbearing but wonderful families.

Life couldn’t have been better for Colin.

-The end-